Regulator seeks 'credible' roaming cuts

Mobile phone operators must act before July 1st to avoid the European Union imposing lower prices for texting or surfing the …

Mobile phone operators must act before July 1st to avoid the European Union imposing lower prices for texting or surfing the web via mobile phones when abroad, the bloc's top telecoms regulator said today.

Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said at the Mobile World Congress that sending a text message or downloading data in another country should not be substantially more expensive.

"Higher roaming charges abroad must be justified by additional costs of operators. If not, they will have to disappear," she said.

The GSM Association, an industry group, said consumers were already benefiting from competition and that it would resist any attempt to institute retail price regulation, as the EU did with voice roaming charges.

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Higher roaming charges abroad must be justified by additional costs of operators. If not, they will have to disappear
Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding

The 27-nation EU adopted a proposal from Ms Reding last year to cut the cost of making and receiving voice calls outside a person's home country, but the proposal did not include data and text messages.

Ms Reding said sending a text message abroad should not be more expensive for consumers than at home plus the "very small marginal costs" for using a foreign network.

"Above this (price level), there is a clear conflict with the single market which I am not prepared to tolerate," Ms Reding said.

With regard to data roaming, used by travellers to check their email on their mobile phones or surf the web wirelessly with a laptop, Ms Reding said the market was still young and that operators were testing business models and price plans, and hence regulators should not interfere too much.

She called for a "credible" cut of wholesale rates, however, noting some operators charged €7 per megabyte of data, while others had cut their wholesale rates to as low as 25 cent.